The term “second screen” generally refers to the use of a computing device (commonly a mobile device, such as a tablet or smartphone) to provide an enhanced viewing experience for content on another device, such as a television set or radio device.
Such computing devices provide to the user of the television set or radio device interactive features. For example an interactive electronic program guide (interactive EPG or IPG) may provide users with continuously updated scheduling information about broadcasts for current and upcoming television or radio programming, and may allow users to navigate such scheduling information interactively using an input device such as a keypad, keyboard or touchpad.
A second screen device may for example be used as remote control to select specific channel presets (commonly numbers between 1 and 99) of a television set or radio device. For example, the second screen device may communicate wireless via infrared with a television set or radio device in order to select a channel preset.
It is further known that second screen devices can be used to control the rendering of media streams on network accessible television sets or radio devices via a wireless local area network (WLAN) using networking protocols such as Universal Plug and Play (uPnP).
However, a second screen application such as an interactive electronic program guide has per se no way of knowing what broadcast channels the user has put on the channel presets of a television set or radio device. This renders the main use case of electronic program guides, namely EPG based program selection, on second screen devices difficult for television sets and radio devices which are controlled via infrared remote control.
In the case of a WLAN connection, both sides of the connection—television set and second screen device—can exchange information with each other if a common data format is agreed. That information may contain e.g. the name of the current channel, plus other metadata. Utilizing this metadata enables the tablet to display the current channel name rather than the channel number. The infrared port, on the other hand, does not typically permit such a feedback of information. In most cases, the infrared transfer is unidirectional (to the TV). If there is no WLAN connection possible—in cheaper devices, there is no WLAN modem built-in, the house WLAN might not penetrate through a concrete ceiling, or the TV manufacturer might use a WLAN protocol that is unknown to the tablet—controlling the setting of the channel may only be possible using infrared signals, and therefore, only possible by having the user memorizing the channel name/channel number assignment. Since there are dozens or hundreds of channels, and since it is often a long time (order of seconds) necessary to switch between any two channels, it is thus generally desirable to enhance the usability of second screen devices.